On Eating Meat

the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, should be the benchmark, or the "insuperable line."

Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, can they reason? Nor, can they Talk? But, can they suffer?

-Jeremy Bentham

“Why do you eat meat?” “WelI, I gotta eat.” I apologize if this goes over the deep end, but this rebuttal reminds me of that certain individual who can be found in every horror story of humanity’s history. Those that were there, the justifiers. Slavery: “My fields have to be plowed.” Stalin’s Purges: “I need a job.” Female Abuse: “I had to keep control.” Animal Slaughter: “I gotta eat.” Lets stop justifying, lets call it what it is: they cared, but they just didn’t care enough.

These same individuals hold wishful hypothetical ideals. You can find them at Holocaust Museums. If you tell them the percentage of the German men who contributed to the killings, you can expect to find them murmuring “Look at what those people did, I would never do that.” Well lets be realistic: like those complying German men, they probably would have cared an often lot, but they probably wouldn’t have cared enough either to do anything but comply.

Sure, eating meat is driven by biological coding which makes it, whether right or wrong, some what justified. But this goes with other things as well. Men killing other men for vital food and possessions. Men raping women to spread the seed of mankind. The strong killing the weak, before the weak toughen and then kill the strong. These have all been ancient characteristics of man. But as man grew wiser, he created a world which did not require these acts to survive. Killing is now the equivalent of a mortal sin in nearly all philosophies. What we see as a necessary coding in the DNA of the earliest men, now is only performed by a sliver of a percentage of living humans. The same goes for rape, abuse and domination. Once we no longer require heinous actions to survive, we are quick to find our moral bearings. The same, I believe, is true for man’s lust for meat. Within a hundred years, edible flesh will likely be grown on its own from cells, without the brain of an animal to direct its growth nor his or her feelings to suffer along with it. I envision large 10 square meter slabs of pork, rolling off the line and right into freezer trucks (potentially healthier and more nutritious than pork we find in supermarkets currently.) Once this day comes, killing animals, by a meat eater’s standards, will not be necessary, and factory farming will then be vilified. Mark my words, when it comes to the horrors of factory farming, man will find his morality the moment its convenient.